


of spiders and men

by MathildaHilda



Series: until the end of infinity [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Gen, POV Second Person, Post-Avengers (2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 14:25:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16176920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MathildaHilda/pseuds/MathildaHilda
Summary: Captain America drops a platform on you and you don’t know how terrifying things dropping down on you will become.(At least it’s not a building.)This is coolest day of your whole life and you can’t help but grin under the mask.At least until the Captain knocks you out.





	of spiders and men

Pins and needles.

That’s what it feels like.

The bite hurts every day up until the day that it doesn’t, but it still itches until the funeral bangs on the door and reality hits you like a sledgehammer to the face.

(You know this, because one almost took you out the other day.)

 

 

 

Uncle Ben dies under your hands, his blood slipping between your fingers, and sobs have wrecked your throat unusable for a day or two, healing powers or not.

(You stop a car with your bare hands and the pain from that doesn’t even come close to the pain Uncle Ben left behind.)

Guilt weighs down on your shoulders and you’re sure that you’d fall straight through the floor if you hadn’t already looked up the structural integrity of the school.

They don’t make the same mistake twice and you stare at the wall dedicated to the school that collapsed during New York.

But how the hell do you protect yourself against aliens dropping from the sky?

 

 

 

You find the spider curled up under your bed, legs bent and covered in dust, and you wonder how long it’s been there. You scoop it up and put it in a jar when May isn’t home, and you try to come up with reasons as to why you should be allowed into the biology lab after school.

You don’t come up with anything solid enough, so you slip on the hoodie and the goggles and fight of a mugger in a nearby street corner.

 

 

 

The first time you get shot, you fall. A cop has taken aim at you rather than the bad guy, fired a round, and it lodges itself between the fourth and fifth rib and you get home with panicked zips and silent prayers that May isn’t home, and the cop gets put on desk duty for a month.

The next time he sees you, he lowers the gun and looks away when you hand over the robber wrapped up with a bow.

The space between your ribs still ache even after it healed, but you fist bump him and thank him and leaves him with a smile.

 

 

 

You don’t know how you do it.

You’ve never been a good liar, so the fact that you manage to hide it from May is a miracle.

You’re not that surprised actually when Mr. Stark figures it out, but it scares the crap out of you when you learn how easy it was for him.

You haven’t gotten to the part of your life where your enemies are smart enough to figure stuff out just by looking for you.

You still got one more person left that you care about.

 

 

 

Kicks and webs is how you’ve done it for six months and hand-to-hand has never been your forte and you still find it a little embarrassing when you think of how easy it was for Sally to knock your fist away at school.

It’s not embarrassing because she’s a girl, of course not. You find it embarrassing because Flash saw the whole thing and made even weirder jabs at you after that.

So, when you stop the guy’s metal fist, you can’t stop but marvel at the fact that you actually caught it. It’s even cooler that you caught a fist  _made of metal,_  but the guy doesn’t seem as happy about the whole thing as you are.

His friend sends you flying, and all you can think is how cool this is.

 

 

 

Captain America drops a platform on you, and you don’t know how terrifying things dropping down on you will become.

(At least it’s not a building.)

This is coolest day of your whole life and you can’t help but grin under the mask.

At least until the Captain knocks you out.

 

 

 

You try to stay on the ground like Mr. Stark told you to, but it’s a little hard when you’ve got super awesome powers and has the trademark of swinging around the city at breakneck speed, so he shouldn’t really be that surprised when you get to the top of the Empire State Building and snap a selfie and FRIDAY reports it directly back to Mr. Stark.

 

 

 

He’s right to be angry at you and you know that. But the knowledge of that isn’t enough to quell the irritation that blooms in your chest or stop the outburst. You try to be all grown up, you’re Spider- _Man_  after all, but you shrink back to a small kid halfway through puberty when Mr. Stark is actually  _there_ , and  _holy crap_   _this wasn’t a good idea._

 

 

 

Some weeks after the funeral, you’d perfected the art of crying silently into pillows and you’ve forgotten how nice it actually is to cry into someone’s shoulder and receive some form of comfort.

May know the half-truth that you spill, and she takes it at that. You watch very old, and some very bad, films, eat too much popcorn and fall asleep on the couch and you leave it at that.

 

 

 

Leaving your girlfriend at prom is probably the crappiest move you’ve ever done, and ever will do, but her dad’s a bad guy and your Spidey-senses are tingling and jumping and screaming at you to do something, so you do what you always seem to do.

You leave.

And that’s probably a good thing, you think, no matter how bad you feel about it, because if you hadn’t… well, then Mr. Toomes would’ve gotten his clawed hands on some very cool stuff and done something very uncool with it.

 

 

 

Spiders are supposed to like cramped spaces, but humans are definitely not supposed to like that so there’s a whole other battle going through your body besides the rising need to breathe.

You’ve had a building dropped on you, concrete and metal and many tons too heavy, and you’ve successfully participated in crashing a plane on Coney Island and you’d think that’d be enough.

No, because one doesn’t get to go home with work half-finished, so you dig through rubble and fire-hazardous material until you find Mr. Toomes, web him up and make your way the hell out of there before Happy can show up and shove you into Mr. Stark’s glaring gaze.

 

 

 

The next time Ned sees you on the ceiling you almost fall off in surprise when he squeals and sticks his fist in his mouth. You save yourself, of course, but you still do a little dance as you try to regain your balance and end up falling into a bookcase.

You spend the next few hours trying to reassemble it and your elbow throbs uncomfortably and Ned talks about how this is, still, one of the best things that’s ever happened to him.

You give up after a few misalignments of the shelves and don’t bother to look for the manual.

IKEA will be the bane of us all.

(You don’t know that that’s not what kills you.

Thanos is the bane of half the Universe, and you.)

 

 

 

Space has always been a thing that’s fascinated you. Maybe not on the same level as science back on Earth, but it was pretty damn close.

But going  _into_  space?  _Without_  extra oxygen? That’s not very cool.

 

 

 

The wizard portals you through the rocky atmosphere of Titan and you kick a purple giant in the face until he grabs you by the throat and shoves you into the ground. Something cracks, but you’re not sure if it’s you or the ground or both and your cry is strangled by sausage fingers around an all too tender windpipe.

You stare at the girl with the antennae and you try to tell her that you feel it too. Your senses tells you to run and to hide and get the hell away from everything, but the only thing you do is stumble when she disappears and catches in Big Pete’s hair.

The man with the marks disappear and so does Big Pete and it scratches at the back of your neck. The wizard looks to you and then to Mr. Stark and it tugs at your heart, because a part of you  _knows_  what’s happening. A part of you  _knows_ what your senses are trying to tell you, but your own fear is what forces the words out of your mouth and into Mr. Stark’s ears.

(Pins and needles. Needles and pins. Ice in your throat and fire in your fingers and ants trying to eat your legs.

The ants win and you feel yourself tipping.)

Mr. Stark catches you and the words fall out of your mouth without permission and all you want to do is scream because it’s been a long time since you were that scared.

Your mouth tastes like ash and you see a piece of your fear in Mr. Stark’s eyes and think of Ned and May and MJ and late nights in Mr. Stark’s lab and phone calls to Happy and you wonder a little who made it out alive.

You apologize for everything and nothing and that you didn’t do more. You apologize for leaving and for leaving them behind.

(You don’t want to go, but you still apologize.)

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope this turned out okay, because this took forever to write
> 
> I have a [Tumblr](http://mathildahilda.tumblr.com) ! Come say hello!


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